Reporter's Birthday

The average age of U. S. Senators is about 56. They are younger, sprier, more active than members of the British House of Lords. The oldest Senator, 79, is Massachusetts's Frederick Huntington Gillett. Older than any Senator, with a far longer period of continuous Senate sendee, is Theodore F. Shuey, for 61 years a short-hand reporter of Senate debates. Last week Reporter Shuey, small, wiry, was 85. The Senate laid aside the Tariff Bill long enough to congratulate him on his great age and his still great ability as a stenographer. As it happened, he was reporting during this eulogy and with unerring accuracy took down words in praise of himself.

Six reporters "cover" the Senate for the Congressional Record. They work in 15 minute shifts, generally sitting in empty Senate seats, sometimes at a table directly under the rostrum. Across special short-hand paper their fine-pointed pens fly in a script all their own. In the thick of argument, with half a dozen Senators darting in and out of the fray, they have no need to glance up but identify each Senator by the sound of his voice. Appalling to some is the mere thought of the number of Senatorial voices, otherwise forgotten, which Reporter Shuey may recollect in his dreams. Even in waking moments, he recalls the ponderous thunder of Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, the swift clipped words of James Paul Clarke of Arkansas "who could touch 210 a minute," the bitter snarl of Marion Butler of North Carolina.

When relieved, the reporters retire to dictate their notes into a dictaphone from which they are later transcribed by typists and made ready for the Record. Senators generally leave to the reporters correction of grammatical mistakes, rearrangements of whole paragraphs to make better sense. The Senate's stenographic staff costs $55,340 per year.

Shuey sayings: "Ashurst [of Arizona] is one of the most delightful speakers here now. . . . Borah's a pretty good speaker but not aggressive enough. . . . John Sharp Williams [of Mississippi] had about the best intelligence in the Senate and deepest culture. . . . King and Smoot [both of Utah] speak most frequently. . . . Why don't Senators nowadays look as distinguished as their predecessors? Well, perhaps they don't get enough to drink. You know that helps a man's looks."

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